Newly appointed Scouts young spokesperson Catherine Clark aged 15 from Luton’s Someries District with a passion for music and photography met her match when she interviewed birthday boy Frank Hamel on his 90^th birthday. This fun loving Scout was halfway through a month long birthday party which will culminate in 10 days of hectic activity in America with two of his three children and four of his great grandchildren.

Catherine realised she had a joker on her hands when Frank opened the door of his house in Stopsley ready to give her the Scout left handshake. “Caught you out there,” he said with a grin.

But this was no ordinary 90 year old. He was as a Wolf Cub in Wimbledon in 1925, started the 1^st Tooting Scout troop at the age of 11, met Baden Powell during preparations for George V1 coronation in 1937 and used his Scouting skills to dig five escape tunnels while a prisoner of war in Germany. After the war he was awarded the MBE for outstanding wartime services and later received the Silver Acorn and the rarely awarded Silver Wolf from the Scouts for exceptional services. He ran a Scout Group in Bromsgrove and later, in 1956, he was selected as a District Commissioner for Luton’s Central Division within days of arriving in the town. He became Town Commissioner and then County Commissioner before retiring in 1983. He was made a county vice president the same year. His day time job as Director of Housing in Luton brought him into touch with the great and the good of the town including many mayors and Charles Hill MP for Luton, later Lord Hill of Luton.

His wife, Betty, died in 2005 and Frank now works regularly in the Pasque Hospice shop in Stopsley which was such a comfort for her. His pride and joy are his three children, David, Jacqueline and Peter, their children and his eight grandchildren.

Frank’s 90^th birthday party started in the middle of August with a family gathering in this country with his son David, his wife and their children. Then it was a special celebration with the staff at the hospice shop in Stopsley. Finally, Frank flew out to Baltimore for a 10-day birthday party with his children Jackie and Peter, his grandchildren and great grandchildren and around 150 young guests who, according to Frank, will have non-stop fun and adventure on an American ranch. “It takes me back to my Scouting days,” he says with relish. You suspect that the youngsters see him as just another fun loving kid.

Born in Wimbledon on 9^th September 1918 after the family moved from Guernsey, young Frank joined the local Scout Group in 1925 as a Wolf Cub to begin a Scouting career that still continues. He remarked, “The old corrugated iron Scout hut of the 4^th South West London Scout Group is still there.”

At 11 he won a place at Tooting Grammar School and helped to start the 1^st Tooting Scout Troop. “We had a wonderful time,” he recalled. “We ended with 12 patrols and over 70 Scouts.” At the regular fortnightly camps his job was to help the Scout Leader with various camp essentials. Frank said, “I became quite skilled at digging long trenches for latrines a direct copy of those in Baden Powell’s ‘Scouting for boys’.”

As a senior patrol leader, Frank was one of hundreds of Scouts mobilized to help at the coronation of George VI on 12^th May 1937. “Our job was to sell programmes in The Mall when we saw this figure on horseback approaching. It was Baden Powell who came over to inspect his Scouts and ask us where we came from.”

Frank met Betty his wife to be while working for London County Council. They married in January 1941 within days of a secret posting to North Africa. As a naval lieutenant, Frank was put in charge of a boat with three Stornaway fishermen ferrying spies to locations behind the enemy lines. “Just six months later,” said Frank, “Italian planes sank us. As we waded ashore near Tobruk we were captured by two Italian nurses. I was quickly despatched to a German POW camp near Hamburg and spent the rest of the war using my Scouting skills to dig escape tunnels. We also started a clandestine Rover Crew which met once a week under the noses of the guards who were very anti Scouts. I was liberated on 10^th May 1945 ready to restart my honeymoon,” he quipped.

Back in England, Frank went to work for various town councils in the newly created post of housing manager at a fraction of the pay he got as a naval lieutenant. Two years after his release he was awarded the MBE for outstanding services as a prisoner of war. “It was a quite unexpected honour for a 29 year old council employee, “said Frank.

“While I was at Bromsgrove just after the war,” recalled Frank, “I took over the local Scout troop as Scout Leader. There were no parents available and they really needed help. By then I had made my mark at Gilwell Park, the Scouts training ground and earned my wood badge.

“Ten years later, on 1^st April 1956, I was offered the post of deputy director of housing in Luton responsible for 14,000 council houses and a staff of 240 to look after them. Within 48 hours there was a knock on the door of our Littlefield Road home and Town Commissioner George Waller was there asking me to take over as District Commissioner for Luton’s central division.” Frank added, “I later served as Town Commissioner, then assistant county commissioner and finally county Commissioner before retiring in 1983. My wife, Betty, never complained. She admitted that she knew when we got married she would have to share me with the Scouts and the Freemasons.”

Frank is now a county vice president and a deputy lord lieutenant which, he says with a grin, means that the council members have to stand when I enter the council chamber. The Scouts awarded him a medal of merit, a bar to the Silver Acorn and the rare distinction of a Silver Wolf for exceptional services to Scouting.

[Back to News Front Page]